OF THE EXPERIENCE AND CUSTOMERS OF A
GINGER-BEER SELLER.
A slim, well-spoken man, with a half-military
appearance, as he had a well trimmed mous-
tache, and was very cleanlily dressed, gave me
the following account: "I have known the
ginger-beer trade for eight years, and every
branch of it. Indeed I think I've tried all
sorts of street business. I've been a coster-
monger, a lot-seller, a nut-seller, a secret-
paper-seller (with straws, you know, sir), a
cap-seller, a street-printer, a cakeman, a clown,
an umbrella-maker, a toasting-fork maker, a
sovereign seller, and a ginger-beer seller. I
hardly know what I haven't been. I made
my own when last I worked beer. Sunday
was my best day, or rather Sunday mornings
when there's no public-houses open. Drinking
Saturday nights make dry Sunday mornings.
Many a time men have said to me: `Let's
have a bottle to quench a spark in my throat,'
or `My mouth's like an oven.' I've had to
help people to lift the glass to their lips, their
hands trembled so. They couldn't have written
their names plain if there was a sovereign for
it. But these was only chance customers; one
or two in a morning, and five or six on a
Sunday morning. I've been a teetotaller
myself for fifteen years. No, sir, I didn't
turn one — but I never was a drinker — not
from any great respect for the ginger-beer trade,
but because I thought it gave one a better
chance of getting on. I once had saved money,
but it went in a long sickness. I used to be
off early on Sunday mornings sometimes to
Hackney Marsh, and sell my beer there to
gentlemen — oldish gentlemen some of them —
going a fishing. Others were going there to
swim. One week I took 35s. at 1d. a bottle, by
going out early in a morning; perhaps 20s. of
it was profit, but my earnings in the trade in
a good season wasn't more than 12s. one week
with another. All the trades in the streets are
bad now, I think. Eight years back I could
make half as much more in ginger-beer as could
be made last summer. Working people and
boys were my other customers. I stuck to
ginger-beer in the season and then went into
something else, for I can turn my hand to any-
thing. I began a street life at eight years old
by selling memorandum-books in the bull-ring
at Birmingham. My parents were ill and
hadn't a farthing in the house. I began with
1d. stock-money, and I bought three memoran-
dum-books for it at Cheap Jack's thatched
house. I've been in London seventeen or
eighteen years. I'm a roulette-maker now;
I mean the roulette boxes that gentlemen take
with them to play with when travelling on a
railway or such times. I make loaded dice, too,
and supply gaming-houses. I think I know
more gaming-houses than any man in London.
I've sold them to gentlemen and to parsons,
that is ministers of religion. I can prove that.
I don't sell those sort of things in the streets.
I could do very well in the trade, but it's so
uncertain and so little's wanted compared to
what would keep a man going, and I have a
mother that's sixty to support. Altogether my
present business is inferior to the ginger-beer;
but the fountains will destroy all the fair gin-
ger-beer trade."
